


Take an Angel by the Wings

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: Angels Among Us [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Precious Peter Parker, also to Gina Linetti, basically this is my tribute to may parker bc she deserves the world, i feel strangely insecure and proud of this piece at the same time, i guess??, implied/referenced panic attack, its not all hugs and smiles at the end but you could call it happy, lots of references to nuns, theres a bit of dialogue but also a lot of memories and thoughts, you could call this a super extended drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 15:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15866580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: Peter gulps and blinks. His lashes catch the moonlight with the glint of broken tear drops. May has the sudden urge to scream at whatever poet ever decided that such sorrow was a beauty to be romanticized.“I had to stop and sit down. It was a, it was a roof. I’ve--I don’t know. I had to think, I guess. Couldn’t really think.”The tears won’t stop. They’re flowing and flowing and oh, God, they won’t stop.May remembers when she read the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in fifth grade. She remembers it so vividly because the nun taught her yet another unforgettable thing: the story contains the shortest verse in the Bible.Jesus wept.She thinks about that little fact every now and then, to this day. It returns to her at full force as she continues to stand there watching her son at arm’s length with wetness flooding his cheeks, overriding his consciousness, and May thinks about how the Bible, for all its mighty poetics in the books of Psalms and Isaiah, afforded none of those metaphorical descriptions to Jesus’ tears.Because there’s nothing beautiful about them, May tells herself. Why do we fool ourselves with the notion that there are kaleidoscopes in mourning?





	Take an Angel by the Wings

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So like many other oneshots I've produced lately, this one was born of a mad obsession one night that absolutely would not rest until I got it written down. 
> 
> Basically, I adore Peter and Tony's relationship with my heart and soul, but May and Peter? They're the genesis of this all. And May Parker deserves the entire freaking world for everything she does for her boy, dammit!
> 
> This is a companion piece to Sometimes We're Holding Angels (check part 2 of this series, it's now linked!), where in conversation with Tony, May references a night when Peter was having rough thoughts while out on patrol and came to May for comfort. This is that exact scene.
> 
> ADDENDUM: It's come to my attention that people who don't know the headcanons of my particular Peter verse are reading this! Gah! Sorry for forgetting to explain. Peter is biracial (part Cuban) and May is 100% Italian in this verse, hence a lot of references to Catholicism. Ok, that's all!
> 
> Theme song and title inspiration: ["Angel by the Wings" by Sia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_3yoOU3-eQ)

May laughs softly to herself sometimes when she remembers the adage: _Something borrowed, something blue; something old and something new_. It certainly was true of her wedding to Ben. She’s always been borrowing something of his, borrowing something of a loved one. On that day, it was a bracelet from her mother. Though it was delicate and almost threatened to fall apart, it swung from her wrist with the palpable weight of a thousand moonlit nights curled up on the window seat with piles of books around. The weight of a mother’s caress through her tangled hair the afternoon she punched Riley McGuire in the playground; the weight of a crushing embrace that second week of December when she returned home from her first year of college. It would be the last hug of that kind between them.

On the day of her mother’s funeral, it was a prayer book. May held it softly between her palms, never once opening it: perhaps afraid of the stab of nostalgia that would shoot through her at the sight of the blue-inked notes in the margins; perhaps apprehensive of the foreknowledge that she would feel nothing upon seeing the handwriting. It was always a fear of feeling too much, or feeling too little. With May Linetti Parker, there is no in between.

On the day of Richard and Mary’s memorial, it was a rosary. Mary had given it to her years earlier, and while she appreciated the gesture, May didn’t consider herself religious at the time and so decided to hang it up on a hook next to her closet door. She wouldn’t touch it again until the day of the memorial service, and again after that, only at Ben’s funeral.

On the day of Ben’s funeral, she carried the rosary in her pocket, yes, but the thing that she borrowed that truly _mattered_ was his jacket.

_(Are you cold?)_

_(No, I’m fine.)_

_(That’s my girl, always a dirty liar. You’re cold and you’re taking my jacket.)_

Ben had many jackets, most of them casual and worn. So was his deep gray blazer, which she snatched on the way out of the apartment that morning without stopping to explain to herself why. The _why_ came to her later, in a creeping vagueness that belied the razor edge of the knife in her chest, when she found herself draping the jacket over her own bare shoulders, over her flimsy black dress.

It wasn’t even black. It couldn’t be called black.

_(The darkest color you can make me wear is gray. That’s it. No compromises!)_

_(Yes, ma’am!)_

She’d never worn black before. Couldn’t even bring herself to buy a black dress for this day.

It is on this day, however, that she stumbles into the greatest irony of her life.

She believes in God.

(It’s an irony that makes no sense to her. After all, when does the _why_ come to her willingly?)

She remembers distinctly the look Peter gave her that day, when he was sitting in the front pew and she was somehow standing behind a pulpit saying words. It was the look of someone suddenly falling into the realization that she was a puzzle--had been all along--and that it would the journey of a lifetime to put her together. It was the look that only Ben knew how to give her. Only Ben, before that day.

Maybe she wasn’t the only one going through life clutching at borrowed things.

Because that is precisely what she is doing out here on the balcony of her bedroom at half past two in the morning, the weathered fabric of Ben’s bomber jacket crumpled in her fist. The material drapes loose and heavy over her slender shoulders. She knows she’s silly. She calls herself that. Never thought she would be the kind to smell a dead person’s clothes and talk to him in the stars, the stars that she knows for a fact will never hold the secret of Ben’s eyes.

She’s going to ground that kid when he gets back. She’s going to ground him so hard, she swears, he’ll have an actual honest-to-God beard by the time she lets him move into his dorm at MIT.

“I blame you and Rich entirely, you know,” she mutters in a conversational tone up at the sky. Her utterance dips upward in an unconscious hiccup. 

The stars twinkle. They never say anything. Even God who scattered them from his bucket of fire and angels, God whom she now believes _must_ know who she is, doesn’t puff out a breath.

“You boys were always corrupting me and Mary with your bad habits. Staying up past your bedtime, skipping breakfast, running to work. Sheesh. ’S no wonder the kiddo picked it up so fast. I wonder if you guys even left any room for his poor mother’s or aunt’s DNA to squeeze in.”

May sighs and hunches over a little tighter into her knees. She’s glad she was never one for nightgowns, because at least the flannel of her pajama pants protects her somewhat from the draft. Perhaps if May were living alone, she would also don Ben’s university shirt which he liked to go sleep in, but she’s not. And never has she been accused of being maudlin.

A hissing sound followed by a bodily whoosh not too far off catches her attention. Her first instinct is to glance behind her and make sure that the bedside lamp is off; then she’s on her feet, bomber jacket barely clinging to her shoulders in her haste, and she’s leaning over the balcony and squinting into the pitch black of night for any sign of the crimson blur she knows to be her nephew.

May retreats from his line of vision the instant before he swings onto the side of the building about a floor below. Perhaps Peter is completely oblivious to this, but his aunt can see everything from her vantage point. She has always been able to.

May watches in a morbid fascination meshed with anxiety as Peter pauses to catch his breath. He’s clinging to the brick by nothing but his knees and fingertips. After a few more seconds, he rips off his mask to reveal his hair matted to his brow in dark, sweaty strands. There’s something glistening on his face. May can’t decide if she wishes more for it to be tears or blood. 

_It’s ridiculous, Ben. The kinds of dichotomies this new world drives me to without you. I love this kid so much I could strangle him._

Finally, Peter moves to crawl up the few feet to his own bedroom window and slides it open. He stumbles a little as he slips in, and May tries to suppress a wince at the sound of him tumbling through. She’s already halfway to her doorway with his name on her lips when she remembers she’s not supposed to be awake.

May is torn. The anxiety that has been gnawing at her chest all night wants to transform into a righteous indignation. She should be knocking down his door right now with her glasses shoved high up her nose and a hand on her hip to hide how it’s shaking. And yet she can’t bring herself to unlock that rage right now. Even if she could, she suddenly doubts it would be there waiting for her.

All she wants to do, she realizes with a jolt, is gather her kid up in her arms and run her hands through his hair and tell him it will be okay.

Because she sure as hell has no idea where he’s been and what he’s seen and if he will be okay, but it’s the only thing you can say when your son decides to take up the cross of the entire world.

Perhaps he didn’t decide it. Perhaps God did. May knows she has a right to be angry, and she has no idea what to do with this information.

The silence from Peter’s room is broken by a series of thumps. May crosses the tiny space of her bedroom to the bathroom door--already has her hand on the knob, ready to turn--when she stops herself. The Jack-and-Jill structure between them allows her to simply press an ear to the door and listen for the telltale sounds of Peter running the tap and scrubbing at his skin under the bubbling stream of water.

The tap is shut off with its characteristic two-second whine. Peter shuffles around--most likely for the hand towel--but there’s a low, rhythmic sound accompanying it that won’t go away. A breath hitching and lungs that ache to suppress the scream inside.

May Parker may not have superhearing, but the ears of a mother can always tell when her child is crying.

She makes the decision to turn the knob at the exact moment that Peter does the same. The door bursts open, yanking May forward. She barely catches herself in time against the door frame and lifts her gaze to meet Peter’s wide eyes.

Wide and brown, like Richard’s. Like Ben’s. Rimmed with a watery red she only saw by accident a week after Ben died.

She doesn’t say anything. She should say something. 

“May?” the kid croaks out.

That’s all it takes, and her brain unfreezes and her arms are already out and wide to welcome the kid home. He’s freezing: even through the layers of her night shirt and the jacket, his cheek is like ice against her chest. Some of the moisture in his curls, she realizes, is not sweat, but rain.

_(You know what those nuns taught me back in grade school?)_

_(Ha, they taught you a lot, didn’t they?)_

_(Shut up. A girl tries to be be entertaining...)_

_(Okay, I’ll be good, I promise. Go on. Tell me what they taught you.)_

_(They had a song about how when it rains, that means God is crying.)_

“It’s okay, baby,” May whispers into his hair. He has no strength left to lift his arms and cling to her. Perhaps the lie is enough to buoy the both of them up. “It’s gonna be okay, Peter. It’s okay.”

_(I thought this was gonna be a funny story, Linetti. You’re always so sneaky.)_

_(Maybe so.)_

_(You’re not allowed to stick your tongue out at me!)_

_(Oh, really! Only Rich can do that?)_

_(Rich, and girls who tell funny stories.)_

_(I see how it is. Should I call my cousin Gina? She’s a much more amazing comedienne than me.)_

_(Oh, c’mere. I guess girls who tell funny stories gotta have some sad stories with them, too. That’s kind of what makes them beautiful.)_

Peter mumbles into her shoulder: “But it’s not.”

There’s a lump all of a sudden in May’s throat. A ball of nerves and the taste of coal. She never wanted Peter to see through the lie this way, this easily, in such few and tiny words.

Somehow May finds the courage in her to reply: “It will be.”

She can practically feel the hesitation vibrating through the boy. And then his arms come up and clutch at her back, fingers digging into her shoulders, in the very formation of desperation she’s been praying not to have to witness in Peter ever again.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says wetly.

“You don’t have to be.”

“Left...curfew.”

“I know.”

“...You’re not mad?” Peter pulls away to peek up at her through his bangs.

In answer, May shushes him and coaxes him to lay his forehead back down against her shoulder. She doesn’t respond directly. “Rough patrol?”

Peter’s face snuffles into a more comfortable position against her chest. She can feel the outline of his nose and chin pressing through the jacket. He doesn’t speak. Not for a long, long time.

“It’s okay, Peter. You can tell me anything. I won’t be mad.” She loops the tip of her index finger in a curlicued pattern against the back of his head to let him feel the sincerity of her words. “I promise.”

“I didn’t actually go on patrol tonight.”

May’s movements slow nearly to a halt. She has to catch herself to resume the soothing motions through Peter’s hair.

“I got about five buildings away--near Ned’s place I think--and then I couldn’t go on. I had to, I had to…”

May pulls Peter back for a second time to rub her thumbs across the delicate corners of his cheekbones. “Shh. It’s okay, you can stop and breathe. I want you to breathe.”

“I can breathe.”

“Okay. Okay, baby. Then take your time.”

Peter gulps and blinks. His lashes catch the moonlight with the glint of broken tear drops. May has the sudden urge to scream at whatever poet ever decided that such sorrow was a beauty to be romanticized.

“I had to stop and sit down. It was a, it was a roof. I’ve--I don’t know. I had to think, I guess. Couldn’t really think.”

The tears won’t stop. They’re flowing and flowing and oh, God, they won’t stop.

May remembers when she read the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in fifth grade. She remembers it so vividly because the nun taught her yet another unforgettable thing: the story contains the shortest verse in the Bible.

 _Jesus wept_.

She thinks about that little fact every now and then, to this day. It returns to her at full force as she continues to stand there watching her son at arm’s length with wetness flooding his cheeks, overriding his consciousness, and May thinks about how the Bible, for all its mighty poetics in the books of Psalms and Isaiah, afforded none of those metaphorical descriptions to Jesus’ tears.

Because there’s nothing beautiful about them, May tells herself. Why do we fool ourselves with the notion that there are kaleidoscopes in mourning?

“Cry all you need to, Peter,” May says. “I’m right here. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

“I can’t--”

Peter chokes on a sob, so hard and so raggedly that May actually thinks he’s dying.

Her fingers are frantic in their caresses over his face.

“May,” Peter speaks up again. He’s hoarse. “May.”

“Yeah. I’m here. I’m May.”

“I didn’t stop them.”

May’s hands move to his arms. Maybe if she rubs them up and down with enough love, the pain will stop.

“Did you know there’s an average of 2.73 deaths by gunshot every day in New York City alone?”

She wishes she didn’t have her glasses on right now. She never needed to see the splinters behind his eyes in high definition.

“That’s--that’s just the deaths. That’s not counting the attempted homicides. Accidental gunshots. Guns used in drug deals, human trafficking, carnappings...petty robberies...bank hostage situations…”

May finds her voice for a moment. “I know. I saw your police feed, Peter.”

Peter doesn’t evince an inkling of surprise at the revelation.

“2.73,” he says again. “2.73 too many.”

May feels as if the very nerves between her flesh and skin are shaking. She could look away for a second and steel herself--push the flood back from her eyes--but she’s never been a coward.

Did the nuns ever say if Jesus wept when he died? She’s pretty sure they did, but suddenly it’s all a muddle. She can’t remember. _She can’t remember_. The nuns said a lot of things, some of them utterly useless. Like how God baked mankind as human-shaped cookies and left some too long in the oven and others underdone, and that’s why we have white, black, and everything in between.

She can’t remember. Ben’s bomber jacket is starting to lose its smell, its flavor of comfort.

“I didn’t stop them.”

May finally finds the right place for her hands: not on top of Peter’s head, nor thumbing across his cheeks, nor buried in his curls. But on his shoulders. Heavy, steady, grounding. 

“You were never meant to stop them all.”

“Then why does it feel like it?”

 _Nor were you meant to carry the weight of every bullet_.

May swallows thickly. A single tear has slipped out, and she’s proud of it, ironically. No, there is no beauty in it; but it’s hers, and the sight of it makes the breath leave Peter a little more easily, and she would cry a thousand more tears like this one if they alone could make this easier on her boy.

“Because,” she says. “Because you’re _good_. That’s why it feels like that. I wish you didn’t have to, but I guess that’s the price of being pure.”

The corner of Peter’s eye twitches. He knows her choice of words is not casual, and he seems to want to debate the use of _pure_ , but he doesn’t go through with it.

“I’m not good. I didn’t stop them.”

“Baby, look at me.”

He does.

“If not for you, how many deaths by gunshot per day would that statistic be?”

“I don’t know. It still shouldn’t be 2.73.”

“You’re missing my point, Peter. It _should_ be higher. Let’s say 3. Or 4. It _should_ be at almost 4. But it isn’t--because of you.”

Peter’s face crumples. May doesn’t need to ask to know what’s wrong, because she knows him: the praise, truthful as it may be, is crushing him inside. It’s just the way he’s built.

“You save 1.27 people every day on average. Isn’t that right, Peter? At least one whole person every day. One person who should be gone by now.”

Peter looks at her. “But not the one that matters.”

May’s mouth snaps shut.

_(I bet you’re gonna live to a ripe old age, Linetti.)_

_(Huh. And why’s that?)_

_(Because you take care of so many people. Geez, people should really give more respect to nurses, you know? You save actual lives. And other times, you’re just there for them when nobody else is. That’s gotta count for something, don’t you think?)_

_(You mean reaping what you sow?)_

_(Or karma, I guess. I like to call it good karma.)_

_(I don’t think the world really works that way.)_

_(Oh, c’mon. You seriously don’t believe you’re gonna be rewarded for all the kindness you show people?)_

_(That should be you, Ben. You’re the one always out there on the streets putting your life out on the line. Although, the whole irony of it is how you help so many people and and risk yourself to do it.)_

_(Don’t think good karma applies to me?)_

_(It does. It should. You know I just worry about you every day.)_

_(Because you love me.)_

_(Hey, you said it, not me.)_

“Yes, Peter,” May whispers fiercely. Her grip tightens around his bony shoulders. “ _Yes_. The one that matters. That one person is a mother, father, brother, friend, cousin, child...somebody that matters.”

Peter opens his mouth to argue. May beats him to the punch.

“Yes, just like Ben mattered to me and to you. To both of us. There was no Spider-Man that night to save him. You were a child. The same child as the one waiting out there somewhere for his dad to come back. The same child that saw his sister walk out the door and disappear forever. There was no Spider-Man that night, and no way in hell were you meant to _be_ Spider-Man that night. Do you understand me?”

Peter locks eyes with her. He wants to understand, he really does. May can see how he means it with his heart and soul.

“Do you understand me, Peter?” May says again. “You need to understand.”

The boy gives a broken nod. May wants to believe him.

“Now you’re Spider-Man, and for every one person that matters that you save, there’s a child out there who gets to see his daddy come home. His sister show up alive. That’s because of _you_ , Peter. It wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. You get it? Do you--do you even understand how much this means?”

Peter sways there in front of her for a fraction of a second, and then he’s crashing into her like a wave of agony into the weathered rock. His arms link around her and tighten, tighten--as if he’s afraid that if he doesn’t seize these words by the teeth right now, they will escape him and he will be locked in the prison of pacing across open rooftops forever.

“I don’t know,” he gasps out. “I don’t know. I don’t know. But I do.”

He’s not making sense. Neither is May; and that’s all right. In their mutual incoherence, they’ve perhaps come together to an agreement.

“Sometimes I wish you weren’t born so _good_ so you wouldn’t have to feel this pain,” May whispers into the top of his head.

All the good people in her life die because of their goodness. She tells herself not to hold her breath, but she still finds herself doing it, in the way she clutches the bomber jacket, thumbs the rosary beads, grips the balcony railing and waits for Peter to come home.

“I don’t,” Peter says back. “It sucks. But I’d rather have this pain, than cause it because I’m not good.”

May’s heart hurts.

The nuns never did say what life was like for the disciples in the three days after the stone was rolled over the tomb.

Did they feel this pain? Did they break their bread and lock eyes with one another over half-muttered stories about how _good_ their Lord had been?

Did they tremble when they folded their hands to pray? Did they raise their gaze to the western sky where the curtain of dark had tumbled over the sunset, and feel the strength bleeding from their knees with the fear and fury of a hundred gazelles?

“You know I love you, right?”

May can feel the boy’s smile curve against her chest at the rumble of her words. He takes a minute to answer.

(They didn’t teach her much of anything useful when it came to grief. Not when it came to the death of twelve men’s only hope.)

(There is no beauty in the sorrow of the hopeless.)

“You know _I_ love _you_ , May. Always have.”

(But a new thought comes to May, perhaps a welcome one. That there is still beauty in the tears of one restoring hope.)

She shifts to shrug off the bomber jacket, prompting an inquisitive sound from the boy, and she shrouds his shoulders tenderly with it. He closes his eyes and breathes in Ben’s scent.

Pine. Aftershave. The secret pint of ice cream he's brought home with him from a long day of fighting crime.

And the familiar, achingly warm kiss of a good, _good_ man.

“And I love you, Peter. Always will.”

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Idk how I feel about this one, tbh. I think there were some moments that shone through, but it became more and more personal as I kept writing--May's thoughts about religion and death mirror a lot of my own--and I get very insecure when I start putting my own heart out there in my writing. Idk. What do you guys think?
> 
> Also, it's purposeful that I put May's religiosity front and center in this story, because it leads up to my headcanon in a future fic that at the same time May regained her faith, Peter lost his. (If my writing pattern goes remotely my way--which it never does--that should be the next fic I'm posting.)
> 
> Are any of y'all Brooklyn Nine Nine fans? Yes?? Then you KNOW what I did with name-dropping Gina back there. ;)
> 
> Universe this fic belongs to: [A Little Unsteady](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1041275)
> 
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